It's not much, about 14 pages, which amounts to the first set of notes (alkanes) I have to study for the advance placement test. Slowly does it, I don't really have to momentum to go full speed yet, and hopefully I will, in the future. But I am glad to see that I've somehow retained SOME of the stuff I've learnt in junior college so alkanes (the easiest of all the topics in organic chemistry) was like pressing the "Refresh" button in your internet browser.
One day, I'll finish alkenes, then aromatic compounds, alcohols, phenols, carbonyl compounds, carboxylic acids, derivatives of carboxylic acids, amines, amides, amino acids, NMR and optical isomerism, I hope.
I think the A*STAR scholarship is a goner. I'm not upset, a little disappointed but nonetheless, NOT upset. At least I tried, what else could I ask for?
I was lurking around this neopets guild site I used to frequent (yes, I still LURK, not play, LURK). Ok, I still post occasionally. Anyway, the site's dominated by Americans and some of them were talking about the Yogyakarta earthquake recently. There they refered to it as the Indonesian earthquake (still correct). And then, someone asks... "Which part of Indonesia?" I have to admit, I was a little annoyed, something as major as this plastered all over the news and someone's asking WHERE??? It's the equivalent of me asking which parts of the US were struck by 911. Don't people keep up with the news anymore? And it wasn't a kid who asked the question, it was a teenager (someone a couple of years my junior). There is no excuse to say that the person's just a teen and wouldn't know. I've been reading the papers since I was 12 so what's your excuse? I don't think the international media has been playing down this disaster. The Bam earthquake received considerable coverage, the tsunami got extensive coverage and I see the Yogyakarta earthquake plastered all over the screen the moment I reach the BBC website. Moreover, in this day and age, don't people (especially the tech savvy teens) know how to use search engines?
And then someone posts about how she wishes that the SE Asia region can experience peace. I guess what she doesn't realise that peace is a concept alien to most SE Asian nations. Especially in the last few years. Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia are the most stable countries in the region. Thailand was showing signs of catching up when their political instability took rein. Indonesia was catching up when Suharto was in power, until he was ousted (in a very ugly manner, and with good reason too) and since then, the presidents after him have been unable to stabilise the country. Corruption, poor economic growth, natural disasters all plague them. Seriously, how unlucky can one country get? You tell me. Racial and religious riots. Widespread corruption. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions. For things to really stabilise there, it is going to take a lot of time. Vietnam is a communist country and MOST communist countries don't fair as well as lassiez faire economies. Peaceful? Relatively, I guess, or their problems are simply not making the news. Myanmar, with its constant problems over it's military rule and treatment of Aung San Suu Ki. Timor Leste; on the verge of civil war, need I say more? Laos... developing country, situated along the Golden Triangle. Out of the media's watchful eye, but for how long? The Philippines, where plots to overthrow the president are all over the place (and the papers). So if you're talking about peace of the entire region, or even most of it, that is going to take a lot of work.
I guess to a certain extent, the world still views SE Asia as a region that harbours terrorists, shows sputtering, negligible or negative growth and with an organisation (ASEAN) too weak to do anything about it. For all the tyranny that the Singapore government has shown towards the opposition, and its authoritarian mannerism, the one thing it has done right was to prevent the country from slipping into anarchy when it could have in the 1960s. And since then, the country has never looked back. And then again, you wonder, were all the immigrants into Singapore from China, India and other countries all meek sheep? Why is it that citizens of other countries are fighting (literally) over things they can't stand and all our forefathers (and us) did would be to complain, threaten the government with strikes (our riots were miniature versions of what we're seeing in other countries now), complain and comply meekly. Hmmm. It probably was a good thing, but it makes you wonder. Was it some freak anomaly or did they have so much faith in an unproven government?
I'm a 3rd year student in what is probably the largest autonomous university in Singapore majoring in a Science-related subject (well it sorta IS SCIENCE). I'm known to be introverted, sarcastic (at times), funny when I rant (which isn't a good thing lol) and somewhat of a loner. I miss LA and would move there in a heartbeat :(
